


The Light of Hope

by OnaDacora



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Dungeons and Dragons, Gen, High Fantasy, The Paladin AU very few people were waiting for, some violence, this is my love letter to wrexie for sticking by me for so long and being a fantastic friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnaDacora/pseuds/OnaDacora
Summary: What if Hope was a paladin, tasked with seeking out and destroying a necromancer with a certain two skeletons as his lackeys? My buddy Wrexie asked me this question months ago, and I finally got around to answering.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wrexie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrexie/gifts).



“You’re making them nervous,” the cleric says, his voice slightly muffled as he raises a wooden tankard to take a drink. Disheveled blonde hair falls into his eyes, over a forehead streaked with trail dust and tracks of sweat. It had been a long day on horseback, under the unforgiving summer sun.

Hope takes a furtive glance around the tavern’s common room, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword. From her seat at an old battered table she notices, first, that the bartender is watching her. Other patrons are hunched over their cups, doing the opposite and trying their hardest not to draw any attention. A coppery dragonborn off in the corner is the only one whose attention seems more curious than suspicious. But Hope supposes that must have something to do with the dented, embossed visage of Bahamut on the front of her breastplate.

“I don’t see why,” Hope says, mopping up the remnants of her stew with a thick slice of brown bread. It’s a comfort to have a nice,  _ hot _ meal after going without.

“You’re a scary woman in a full suit of armor—”

“I’m not  _ scary, _ Deacon,” she protests.

“—who keeps resting her  _ hand _ on her sword like she’s about to cut someone down at a moment’s notice!” he says, gesturing towards her waist. “By Pelor’s light, woman,  _ relax. _ No one is going to help us at this rate.”

“We’re here to  _ smite _ evil from their lands—”

“And?” Deacon arches a brow. “Look, I understand that you’re from the city, but you don’t seem to get that these people aren’t used to having big shiny paladins of Bahamut stomping through their villages.”

“Stomping?”

“You’re a servant of law and justice, and you can bet your a—” He cuts himself off, setting down his tankard as his eyes dart over to the child sitting on her other side. “Your  _ behind, _ that these people are worried you’re going to exact whatever justice you see fit if they put a toe out of line.”

“I know the word ‘ass’,” Frisk says, rolling their eyes. 

“Hush,” Hope tells them with a reprimanding look. Their face screws up in annoyance but they don’t reply, instead reaching up to tug on the end of one long, gently-pointed ear poking out from their hair. She turns back to Deacon. “And  _ I _ understand that  _ you _ don’t know any better, but this isn’t my first time outside the city. Frisk and I have been traveling these lands for the better part of four months and this is the first time we’ve had such an unwelcome reception. The only difference is that we picked up  _ you _ along the way.”

“Me?” he asks, eyebrows shooting up. “Why would any self-respecting human town have anything against a servant of Pelor? These are my people.”

“Well, then why don’t you go ask your people if they’ve caught wind of any undead in the area, then?” She shrugs her shoulders. “Me and my big scary sword will stay right here and not get in your way.”

Deacon takes another glance around the room, and whatever he sees he doesn’t seem to like. His face scrunches into a frown and he turns back to face Hope. “As much as I don’t like him, I think we can trust the word of that warlock—”

“I thought he was a wizard?” she interjects, surprised.

“No, that Capra fellow was definitely a warlock. But I think we can take his word that they traveled this way. I don’t… Something hasn’t felt right the entire time we’ve headed this way. Do you feel it?”

Hope falls quiet, finger tracing over the uneven surface of the hilt of her sword as she focuses inward. It’s there the moment she stops to think, that prickle along the back of her neck, the chill down her spine that tells her that some traces of evil are close enough to sense. But whatever it is isn’t fresh. It’s like a footprint, a residue. A trace of the necromancer she’s been hunting for months, who had eluded her twice before. He was toying with her, playing this game of cat and mouse that had cost too many innocent lives since this journey began. But now she has an ally, and she thinks that might just make all the difference.

After all, Pelor’s servants are known for their skill at exterminating undead.

* * *

They’re glad, later, for the hot meal before the villagers ran them out of town. Once Deacon had finally caved and started asking the other tavern-goers if they knew anything about a necromancer, their reception turned decidedly hostile and they were told that, under no uncertain circumstances, would they be allowed to stay. With her words falling on deaf ears and unwilling to fight them, Hope led their band of three back out into the wilderness before things could turn violent.

For whatever reason it seemed that the necromancer had earned the villagers’ favor. Hope can only imagine it was through some sort of dark magic. Whatever Deacon might be thinking on the matter, he doesn’t voice his opinion.

It’s dark by the time they make camp, their hopes of sleeping in beds dashed hours ago. Frisk is asleep on their bedroll by the time that Deacon scrapes together a meager amount of firewood and gets to work trying to set it up. He glances up as she starts to undo the straps and buckles holding her armor in place, setting the pieces aside one by one. When she catches him watching he quickly looks over at Frisk and then back down at the rickety assemblage of sticks.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks him, laying her sword across her legs and leaning forward a little to study his handiwork.

He doesn’t immediately answer. “Sort of,” he says, sitting back to reach into a pocket in his homespun vestments. They’re a dingy sort of yellow, closer to the color of wheat than gold. Deacon said something about being a country cleric after they’d bumped into each other during her last fight with some of the necromancer’s minions. A traveling healer of sorts. At least his mail armor is in better shape than his clothes. He fishes out a small knife and a stick of flint. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask. Why’s your kid traveling with you? It’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”

Hope’s first instinct is to clam up, to tell him to mind his own business and end this line of discussion. But she looks at him, this cleric of Pelor, and knows that as it stands they owe each other their lives (and Frisk too, she reminds herself). Besides, he isn’t speaking with any sort of judgement, just curiosity. She can’t blame him for wanting to know more, she knows how they must look. Her, a human, and Frisk, a half-elf. No husband or father in sight. She’d heard the questions enough times. Everyone had opinions on half-breeds like her child. 

“They need to know I’ll never leave them behind,” she says, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt. Her path finds a root from the tree above them almost flush to the ground, and she worries it with her foot. “They’re good at taking care of themselves and know when to hide, they won’t get in the way—”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that they would,” Deacon says, giving her a quick, apologetic glance as he continues to struggle with getting the fire to catch.

Hope hesitates, a little taken aback by his consideration. She clears her throat. “I just don’t want to leave one day in service of Bahamut, fall in battle, and leave Frisk wondering if I’m ever coming back. I… Well. I know what it’s like, waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.”

He looks up at her again, pushing his hair out of his face with the back of his hand. There’s sympathy there, and kindness. “Frisk’s father?” he asks quietly. After a second his face screws up and he looks down again, fumbling a little with the flint. “Sorry, you don’t have to tell me, I’m being rude.”

She’s smiling a little, caught off-guard by his awkwardness. “Yes. I won’t bore you with the details…”

“I’m happy to listen if you want to talk about it. But don’t feel the need to share on my behalf,” he says, frowning now at the bundle of sticks.

“I admit it’s nice to have someone to talk to,” she says. He just nods. “He was an elf, obviously. A…  _ well… _ A bard.”

Deacon snorts and Hope feels herself blush.

“I know! I should have known better,” she blurts out, shaking her head.

“Was this before or after you became a paladin?”

“Before. I got pregnant, and after I told Krisithil about the baby he didn’t stick around. We stayed with my mother for a while but…” A twist of discomfort coils in the pit of her stomach, and he seems to notice the abrupt change in mood. Deacon looks up again, brow furrowed, but before he can say anything she plows forward. “It didn’t work out. So I took Frisk and we left and the temple of Bahamut offered us shelter in exchange for work. After a few years of cleaning and cooking I decided that training as a paladin would be a greater service to the god who had sheltered us.”

“That’s incredibly noble of you,” he says, and the sincerity is plain in his voice. “I wish I could say my vocation was so inspiring.”

“Surely you heard the call to service. You’ve been blessed by Pelor just like I was blessed by Bahamut—”

“I was left on the temple steps as an infant. I was raised to become a cleric of Pelor,” he says, shrugging and offering her a wry smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I live to serve him and I’ve stopped questioning his plans for me, but sometimes I think it might have been nice to have a bit more  _ choice _ in the matter. Who knows, I might have made a good adventurer.”

“Isn’t adventuring what you’re doing now?” she asks him, tipping her head to the side as a grin plays at the corners of her mouth.

“If you want to get technical,” he agrees, and she laughs quietly. “Hunting after undead isn’t exactly my average fare.”

“Is it not? I thought clerics of Pelor— Do you need some help with that?” Hope sets her sword aside, leaning in closer towards the still-dark fire pit as he continues to struggle with the flint and knife. 

“Damn it all,” Deacon grumbles under his breath, emptying his hands and shoving them back, empty, towards the wood. “I’ll take care of it. Get back.”

She does as he tells her before she even has to think about why, and an instant later a fire bursts into life. Heat batters her face and makes her pull away even further, gaping at him as she shields her eyes with her hand. There’s a look of grim satisfaction on Deacon’s face as he drops one hand to his lap and the other— the other clutches at the holy symbol hanging around his neck, the golden face of Pelor wreathed in rays of sunlight.

Hope stares at him for a moment, and he stares right back at her, waiting. She swallows. “That didn’t look like holy fire,” she says slowly.

“You’re right,” he says, and the way his jaw clenches, the sharp way he speaks… It’s a challenge.

“Well…” Hope holds his gaze, brushing some hair out of her face and laughing softly. “Why didn’t you just do that to begin with?”

He wasn’t expecting that. She can tell by the slight widening of his eyes and the way his mouth opens and closes one, twice before he finally says, “Habit, I guess,” in a quiet voice, and she doesn’t realize just how tense he was until he finally, slowly, relaxes visibly across the fire from her. “The arcane tends to catch people off-guard when coming from a cleric.”

“I know to expect it now, so don’t worry about me,” she says, smiling kindly. “I imagine that fire will come in handy.”

* * *

It does.

Raising her shield in front of her face and shoving  _ hard, _ Hope topples the flaming corpse taking a swipe at her, its strike making a dull clanging sound against the tempered metal. Gritting her teeth and thrusting her sword into the ground, she braces the shield with both hands and decapitates the creature with one quick downward blow. She wastes no time in retrieving her sword and spinning on her heel to check for Deacon.

A faint green shimmer dances around his body, barely visible but there nonetheless, and Hope thinks that must be one of his arcane gifts. An arrow streaks towards him and deflects away in a spark of light, as if striking some kind of armor. Wrenching the spikes of his morningstar out of a hunk of decomposing flesh with the aid of his foot, Deacon points it —bits of gore clinging to the metal as he does so— and clutches at his holy symbol with his other hand. With a yelled, unintelligible word, a lash of bright golden light strikes the skeletal archer, blasting its bones apart.

He’s left himself open. Hope rushes to cover his back, pressing up against him and raising her shield to deflect the cleave of a rust-eaten sword as another shambling corpse attacks them. It clangs against the steel with more force than she was expecting, and Hope has to take a step back to catch herself. It pushes her closer against Deacon, so close that the back of her breastplate scrapes against his mail.

“Watch your ass!” Hope snaps at him, shoving with her shield and using the opening to raise her sword and land a heavy, downward stroke that cleaves a quarter of the way through the corpse’s shoulder, almost to the center of the ribcage.

“I thought you didn’t want us saying ‘ass’ with your kid nearby,” he says, his tone infuriatingly smug for being in the middle of a fight.

For a moment Hope is worried that Frisk  _ is _ nearby, but no. No, they’re nowhere to be seen, just as it should be. They’d been told to hide before they’d engaged the pack of undead and as far as she can tell they’re doing a good job of it.

“Less talking” —she raises her foot and kicks the corpse off of her blade, knocking it prone before seizing the hilt in both hands and thrusting downwards to neatly sever its neck. With a dry hiss and clatter of teeth, the body goes limp as the now-free head lolls to the side— “more fighting.”

“Yes ma’am.”

In the end it isn’t much of a battle. A handful of mindless skeletons and risen corpses don’t make for much of a challenge, and the worst they take is a shallow cut on Deacon’s forearm. He seems more frustrated at the damage to his already-worn clothes, grumbling about not knowing a proper mending spell as he heals himself with a soft glow of golden light. 

But it’s when Frisk pops up from behind a tree and picks their way through the scattered remains that Hope notices that there’s more bodies strewn across the ground than she remembers them felling. Upon closer inspection she realizes that there aren’t just once-undead, but there’s also—

“Goblins?” Deacon says, hurrying forward a few paces to stand before the closest green body. Hope goes to join him, blindly reaching for Frisk’s hand as they fall into step beside her. The cleric nudges the goblin in the side, going so far as to roll it over onto its back. Limp and lifeless, glassy, clouded eyes stare blankly up at the sky. “They’re still fresh, these wounds haven’t even dried yet.”

“that’s because you caught us in the middle of taking care of them.” A deep, familiar voice calls out to them, and when Hope’s head jerks up to look for the source, standing there about twenty feet away is a short, squat skeleton watching her. The slender bones of his thumbs —held together by necromantic magic— hook on the belt around his robes. He jerks his head off to the side, towards the thicker section of woods. “there’s a camp off that way. these were just the stragglers.”

“BROTHER, WHERE ARE YOU— OH!” A second skeleton —this one much taller and thinner, clad in a shattered set of armor with a huge maul strapped to his back—strides out of the forest, stumbling to a halt as he catches sight of Hope, Deacon, and Frisk. His eyeless sockets seem to fix on Hope, and they widen in surprise. “IT’S THAT PALADIN AGAIN! HELLO! I SEE YOU HAVE A NEW FRIEND WITH YOU!”

“What the hell?” Deacon blurts out.

Hope ignores him. Instead her attention is fixed on the first skeleton, the one who, the last time they’d encountered one another, had called himself Sans. “Why would you be attacking goblins?” she demands, hefting her shield just a little closer as her hand tightens on her sword.

“WE WERE ORDERED TO!” the tall one, Papyrus, answers with a grin. As he speaks, figures start to emerge from the trees. More skeletons, more walking corpses, at least twenty of them following the pair in silent, mindless obedience. Hope clutches Frisk’s hand tighter, drawing them closer to her side. Deacon reaches for his holy symbol and grits his teeth.

“i think she figured out that much, bro,” Sans says, his skeletal grin widening with amusement. “you should know, that camp of goblins has been raiding the nearby village. now it’ll be a lot harder.”

“So, what, your master made some sort of  _ deal _ with the village? Is  _ that _ why they’re defending you?”

His grin, somehow, grows even wider. “had some trouble?”

Hope grits her teeth. “What is he getting in return? I refuse to believe he did this out of the  _ kindness _ of his heart.”

“BUT IT IS OUT OF KINDNESS. GASTER—”

“hey, whoa,” Sans says, turning to his brother and getting his attention. “bro, you gotta be careful.”

“SANS, THIS ALL SEEMS LIKE A HUGE MISUNDERSTANDING! GASTER JUST WANTS TO HELP! HE EVEN SAID THAT HE DIDN’T WANT US HURTING THE PALADIN LADY, THAT—”

“papyrus!”

“—THAT SHE’S JUST DOING WHAT SHE THINKS IS BEST! SANS, WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?”

Sans is covering his face with one hand, and Hope and Deacon share a quick, confused look. But this awkward moment isn’t enough to distract her for long. Hope’s eyes narrow and she shakes her head.

“People have died.  _ Innocent _ people. I’ve spent four months—”

“hang on. those people weren’t innocent. and i get that the undead have a sort of  _ reputation, _ but—”

“It’s not about reputation,” Deacon snaps, his expression dark. “Undead are an abomination to be snuffed out. A  _ defiance _ of the order of life and death. You shouldn’t  _ exist. _ ”

“THAT’S VERY RUDE. I RATHER ENJOY EXISTING,” Papyrus says, mildly offended.

“look,” Sans says, loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. “this is exhausting. if you have questions, why don’t you ask the old man himself, huh?”

Deacon shakes his head. “We’re not going anywhere with you, we ought to kill you right— Hope?”

Hope is sheathing her sword, glancing over at Deacon. His eyes are wide with growing horror, his mouth gaping as she presses her lips into a hard line. “I want answers,” she says, to him and to Sans. “And I want to meet this necromancer that’s been  _ toying _ with me.”

Sans stares at her for a moment, his face —skull?— remarkably expressive all things considered. She sees the surprise there, replaced by something like respect, then finally hesitation. He seems to mull something over before saying, “he wasn’t toying with you. not the way you think. he just didn’t want you getting in the way.” The strange lights in his eyes, like pupils, flick over towards Deacon. “we didn’t think you’d  _ listen _ if we tried to explain.”

“Hope, you can’t be serious,” Deacon says, pleading with her. “This is probably a trap. No,  _ definitely _ a trap!”

“if you’re so worried about her, pal, you can come too,” Sans says with a shrug. “no, uh,  _ skin _ off my back.”

Hope lets out a loud, snorting laugh, caught wholly off-guard by the joke. Deacon just shoots her a startled,  _ affronted _ look. Sans seems pleased with himself. With a gesture he directs the silent, waiting band of undead back towards the woods, and after a few seconds he turns to Hope and beckons her with a curl of his fingers.

“follow us, he’s not far,” he says, then turns to follow after their minions.

Hope watches him, hesitating before she squeezes Frisk’s hand. They squeeze back. “Stay close to me,” she mutters. “And if I tell you to run, you do as I say.”

“Hope, this is insane,” Deacon hisses, stepping in closer to her, trying to block her path. “You can’t—”

“I can,” she says firmly, fixing him with a hard look. “I want to hear what he has to say, and if I don’t like it… Well, this will be my first time getting close enough to kill the bastard.”

“Language,” Frisk says in a singsong voice.

“Now are you coming with us or not?” Hope asks.

Deacon has a white-knuckle grip on the holy symbol around his neck, his eyes darting between Hope and the receding backs of the skeleton brothers. After an internal struggle, he lets out a haggard sigh, hanging his head for a second before casting her a weak glare. “If this gets us killed, I’ll be very cross with you, Hope Bearhart. But I’m with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This might be one of those things I come back to later as the mood strikes me, so I left this nice and open-ended.


End file.
